How many times have you encountered a situation, whether personal or professional, where you’ve said to yourself, “If only I knew the answer … I would…” or, I could…” or, I might…”? Most likely, these thoughts predicated a desire to provide help in some way. In fact, recently reported studies on the rise of volunteerism not surprisingly indicate that “helping” is an innately strong human instinct. When we find ourselves in situations where we are unable to offer the help we know we could provide if only we had the right tools and knowledge, we become extremely frustrated. It may seem ludicrous, given the fact that it is so intensely information rich, but it seems our relatively mature contact center arena is just now deciding to abandon the traditional script and is waking up to the notion that many positive results are possible by empowering agents on the frontline with knowledge that they can use to help customers --- and contact centers are acting on that fact. In all fairness, the old way of requiring reps to strictly adhere to tightly scripted responses then escalating to management when those responses proved inadequate had merit in that it was an attempt to keep a sense of order and decorum in what could become a very chaotic environment. Unfortunately, customers, like you and I, do not have uniform needs and concerns that fit into neat little packages. Therefore, those scripts could not provide true customer satisfaction, which caused great angst for both reps and customers. Fortunately, as you’ll read in our two powerful Special Report articles, as well as our Bottom Line column, there are terrific methods to follow in order to become part of this new contact center culture. It is also extraordinarily gratifying to learn that there is now a strong movement to transfer the wealth of knowledge gained on the frontline (arguably the core and pulse of the business) to top executives, who ultimately make the critical decisions. Having this knowledge will definitely go a long way in helping them make the “right” decisions for the business, its customers and employees. We offer three in-depth pieces on this subject, so, as the headlines suggest, “Throw Open the Doors,” “Broaden Senior Management’s Understanding of Your Contact Center” and provide the “Enlightenment” necessary for change.

Linda Driscoll-Dobel